Community leaders in a south Devon village are planning to build a concrete platform so those wanting to use their mobile phones can climb up and use it to pick up a network signal.
The 200 residents of East Prawle can't get coverage from any of the mobile phone networks. But after a holidaymaker discovered that an Orange …

It makes sense

No surprises that the UK is so far behind.

My sister and mother live in Cornwall and can't even receive channel 5 yet, let alone Cell service. Psychotically it looks like the analog transmitters will be turned off before the local transmitter will be upgraded. Great planning!

Airwaves

So, effectively, a roofless phone box. Hmm.

As for digital in the South-West, the problem is that if they increase the transmitter power for digital now, they drown out the analog (since they share frequency bands), hence they need to turn off the analogue first, then give people a better digital signal. So, a major systems upgrade with no decent service during the overlap period? I pay my license fee, etc etc, rant rave.

A shame really that so much new kit is being released with digital tuners but no analogue (unlike the Panasonic HardDisk / DVD recorder I carefully chose and ordered which then became discontinued before I received it so I am getting the 'newer better' model for the same price but guess what? No PAL tuner. Luckily I have a good signal, otherwise I would be asking for an 'older, worserer' model instead)

I am going to have to redial......

Orange Coverage

Well Orange is using the gsm 1800 band which is not viable for rural coverage as it is more suited for urban coverage. It would be beat to put a repeater setup or petition orange to setup a base station.